On Fri, 24 Feb 1995 18:35:18 GMT John Stewart said:
>My personal opinion based on my experience supporting mailing lists
>(using the Unix Listprocessor software) and as a Usenet News Administrator
>is that many of the mailing lists which currently exist should be replaced
>with newsgroups. Newsgroups are far less of a hassle to support and make
>more efficient use of network bandwidth and machine resources.
>
>Mailing lists are still the best option for
> 1) very specialized topics that will only attract a small number
> of participants.
> 2) private discussion where subscribers are added by invitation only
> or screened in some way.
Speaking as the custodian of Temple University's Listserv, which puts out
around 80K msgs per day lately, I can tell you that costs for supporting
Listserv are very real, however, there are also many benefits to be gained by
hosting a Listserv. Several years ago, when we first got Usenet service
here, I was down on Listserv, but now that I have experience with both
medium, my views have changed considerably.
What people outside of Temple cannot see is that there are dozens of Listserv
lists here which are devoted to instructional purposes within our
University. These lists are used to by students and instructors in various
courses to discuss their course lectures. The power of Listserv as an
instructional tool is incredible. We also use Usenet for the same thing and
I can see plenty of evidence that Usenet is not as good a venue for this
stuff as Listserv. I am not sure why though. Because of Listserv's
pedigogical value, I am able to justify keeping it, however, I am still
negotiating with management regarding strategies for improving the way our
Listserv and SMTP agent disperse outbound mail. One of the long-term options
I plan to explore is moving to a non-VM version of Listserv, but that's not
something I am prepared to do any time soon.
Eric (or maybe someone else) said that Temple is closing some lists. Here's
the situation: I asked the owners of two of Temple's 100+ lists to find new
homes for those lists because I know full well that I will not be able to
justify keeping them here when I meet with my Vice President to discuss this
situation. I am, however, trying to avoid closing any other lists and I am
reasonably certain that I will succeed in that regard. I have also put my
Help-Net list on hold during the day to ease the load on Princeton's
resources until the changes we need to make here are authorized and than
implemented. I also will refuse requests from non-Temple people to create
new lists here simply because I think Temple is already doing its bid toward
contributing to the Listserv network given that we handle so much volume
now.
My point in this message is to encourage other schools to buy Eric's Listserv
software. Thus far, its seems much more robust in terms of features than
Majordomo and that List-proc package. Listserv has a lot of pedigogical
potential that can easily be justified by organizations who are in the
business of education. Having Listserv here at Temple provides Temple's
researchers and students with the possibility of starting Listserv groups
here for the benefit of research and scholarly studies that could not be done
without it. We even have some faculty who use Listserv's database functions
to pull off groups of postings (by grading period) and use their students
contributions as part of their grades. This would not be possible with other
packages that are similar to Listserv.
Usenet is also not a substitute for Listserv in many cases. There are
several reasons why I feel this way and they all come from having a lot of
experience with both media from the technical point of view and in my
graduate studies in educational psychology. Suffice it to say that there are
many Usenet groups which are polluted by off-topic postings and where the
value of those groups to their regular readers is often minimal. Listserv
provides for a closed and controlled forum where a List owner can have a lot
of control over his or her list; control that is not available on unmoderated
Usenet groups.
There are certainly many Listserv lists which could be moved to Usenet
without a problem, but there are many lists which would go down the tubes in
terms of the quality of discourse if they were moved to Usenet. Most of the
lists at Temple are examples of lists which would not be well-served as
Usenet groups in my humble opinion. The reasoon I say that is because when
someone at Temple asks me to start a Listserv list for them, I always give
them the choice of going with Usenet (I even try to encourage it) but few
people ever seem interested in doing so due to the highly opened nature of
Usenet and the fact that creating a globally available Usenet group is a long
and drawn out process.
Being as though I still haven't met with my department's director or our VP
regarding Listserv's future here and the BITnet situation, these opinions are
entirely my own. They're not a reflection of Temple policy. Oh by the way,
I have no vested interest in Listserv what-so-ever. I am not one of those
mysterious L-Soft investors nor does my job here depend on the continued
availability of Listserv. As such, I think I can approach this issue in an
objective manner.
Stan Horwitz, Consultant | Bitnet | Internet
Temple University | V4039@TEMPLEVM | [log in to unmask]
Manager of Help-Net and E-mail postmaster for VM.TEMPLE.EDU and TEMPLEVM
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